The Combat Phase

If you remember, the combat phase happens after the first main phase of the turn, giving the player whose turn it is a chance to cast creatures, enchantments, artifacts, sorceries, and planeswalkers before they attack.  Combat is broken into the following steps:

1. Beginning of Combat - At the beginning of the combat phase, both players get the opportunity to cast instants and play abilities.
2. Declare Attackers - The player whose turn it is chooses which of their creatures (if any) will attack and what player or planeswalker they will attack.  Only creatures that the attacking player has controlled since the beginning of the turn and are untapped may attack.  Once attacks are decided, the attacking creatures tap as the cost for attacking.  Once all costs are paid, each player gets another opportunity to cast instants and play abilities.
3. Declare Blockers - Any player that is being attacked or controls a planeswalker that is being attacked may choose to block the attacking creatures with their own creatures.  A creature can only block if it's untapped, and a creature can only block a single attacker.  Any number of blockers can be assigned to a single creature, so if Player A attacks with two creatures and Player B has three creatures, Player B can block one of the attacking creatures with two of their creatures and the other with one, or all three on one attacking creature letting the other go through unblocked, or they can block with some or none of his creatures instead.  Once the defending player has decided their blocks, any attacking creature blocked by two or more creatures has those blockers ordered.  The order determines how the attacking creature will deal damage.  After all of that, there is another opportunity for players to cast instants and play abilities.
4. Damage - Unblocked attacking creatures deal damage equal to their power to the player or planeswalker they are attacking.  Creatures that are blocked by one creature deal damage equal to their power to the blocking creature and the blocking creature deals damage equal to its power to them.  Creatures that are blocked by multiple creatures deal damage to the first blocker up to their power but no less than what would be enough to kill the first blocker.  Any damage left over can be assigned to the next blocker in the same manner, and so on.  Let's look at a couple examples:
   • An attacking Enormous Baloth is blocked by two Siege Mastodons. The Baloth's controller can assign five damage to the first Mastodon and put the other two on the second Mastodon, put six damage on the first and one on the second, or put all seven damage on one. They cannot put four on one and three on the other.
   • Same situation, but this time, before damage, you play a Lightning Bolt on the first Mastodon. Now, since it already has three damage, you only need to assign two more damage to it to kill it, so you can assign the other five to the second Mastodon.
   • Same as the first situation, but this time, your opponent plays Giant Growth on the first Mastodon. It now has eight toughness, so you have to assign all seven damage to it. Once blockers are ordered in the declare blockers step, you can't change that order if something like Giant Growth happens to make the combat bad for you.
5. End of Combat - At the end of combat, players get another opportunity to cast instants and play abilities.  Once everyone passes, the game moves to the next main phase.

Let's define a couple terms within the game, because you'll see them a lot on cards.

Attacking - A creature is attacking if it's declared as an attacker.  It stays attacking until all players have passed at the end of combat or it leaves the battlefield.
Blocking - A creature is blocking if it's declared as a blocker.  It stays blocking until all players have passed at the end of combat or it leaves the battlefield.
Unblocked - An attacking creature is unblocked if no creature was assigned to block it during the declare blockers step.
Blocked - An attacking creature is blocked if one or more creatures are assigned to block it during the declare blockers step.  If all creatures blocking it leave the battlefield, the attacking creature is still blocked.

"That doesn't make sense, James.  If nothing's blocking a creature, shouldn't it be unblocked?"  Think of declaring blockers as intercepting the oncoming attack.  Even if the blockers leave, that's given you the time to move to a new location and avoid the attack.

Combat would be pretty boring and lacking in strategy if it was just big creatures with no abilities running into each other.  Fortunately, there are a lot of abilities that affect combat and make the game far more interesting.

First Strike and Double Strike

Creatures with first strike and double strike split the damage step of combat into two steps.  The first damage step is just for creatures with first strike and double strike - everything else has to sit there and wait (or get killed by the guys with first strike and double strike).  Then, in the second damage step, any creatures that are still around that haven't dealt damage (so you can't get cutesy and give a creature first strike after the first strike creatures have dealt damage to 'turn it off') AND creatures with double strike deal damage.  That means creatures with double strike deal damage twice in combat and can quickly decimate an army of blockers... or an opponent.  First strike and double strike are most often found in red and white.  Black also gets a little first strike, usually on dark knights.

Flying

Creatures with flying can't be blocked except by other creatures with flying and creatures with reach.  This makes a creature with flying hard to block and a lot more valuable as an attacker.  This, along with similar abilities, is sometimes called an evasive ability, since it can evade most blockers and deal damage directly to players or planeswalkers.  Similar abilities are landwalk and trample.  Flying is most often found in blue and white, with black getting some as well.  Red gets a few splashy fliers as well (usually dragons), with green rarely getting this ability.

Trample

Creatures with trample deal damage differently than normal creatures.  If a creature with trample is blocked, it treats the player or planeswalker it's attacking as the last blocker in order.  So if a creature with five power and trample is blocked by a creature with two toughness, that creature can assign two damage to the blocker and trample the last three damage over to the player or planeswalker it's attacking.  Green creatures have trample as their most common form of evasion, as it allows their big creatures to get damage through small blockers.  Black and red creatures sometimes have trample as well.

Landwalk

Creatures with landwalk can't be blocked if the defending player controls a land of the specified type.  So if the defender controls an Island, they can't block a creature with islandwalk.  This is usually a basic landtype (forestwalk, swampwalk, mountainwalk or islandwalk), but any land type can appear.  Dryad Sophisticate has non-basic landwalk, for example, and can't be blocked if the defending player controls non-basic lands.  You'll note I skipped over plainswalk, and that's because there are rarely any creatures with plainswalk - the flavor of the ability is that these creatures excel in blending into the land type they have landwalk for (dryads in the forest, tunneling creatures in mountains) and it's hard to blend into the open plains.  Most often, creatures with landwalk are found in the color those lands produce (forestwalkers in green, islandwalkers in blue, etc), but green can also get landwalkers of other types.

Reach

Creatures with reach don't get any bonus when they're attacking, but are very effective blockers since they can block creatures with flying.  Most often templated as spiders or archers, these creatures, while stuck on the ground for attack, can envelop or shoot down flying creatures.  Green has the most creatures with reach, which makes sense, since it has the least fliers.  White also has the occasional creature with reach.

Deathtouch

Damage dealt by a creature with deathtouch, combat or otherwise, destroys that creature.  Because of this, when a creature with deathtouch is blocked by multiple creatures, it only needs to deal one damage to each to do enough to kill it, so a 2/2 with deathtouch like Acidic Slime can kill the first two creatures blocking it, no matter their toughness.  Deathtouch is almost exclusively found in green and black, representing natural toxins and deadly poisons wielded by creatures of these colors.

VIGILANCE

Creatures with vigilance don't have to tap as a cost of attacking.  They still have to be untapped to attack, but they stay untapped and as such, they can block as well as attack.  That makes deciding whether or not to attack with a creature with vigilance a lot easier, as you'll still have him available to block on your opponent's turn unless it's killed in combat, and then it'll probably have taken a creature with it.  Vigilance is most often found on white creatures, as white is the best at defense through creatures and combat skill.  Blue and green also have some vigilance.

Haste

Creatures with haste get to ignore the rule that a creature has to be under a player's control since the beginning of the turn to attack.  They also get to play abilities with the tap symbol in the cost on the turn they come into play.  This gives creatures with haste an element of surprise, as normally your opponent has a turn to react to the creatures you play before you can attack with them.  Red gets the most creatures with haste, playing into their impulsive, straight ahead nature.  Green and black also get get haste creatures infrequently as well.

Lifelink

Damage dealt by a creature with lifelink causes its controller to gain that much life.  While not having a direct impact on combat, a creature with lifelink can make it harder for its owner to be killed by not only keeping an attacker from getting to the player, but gaining life with the damage it deals.  White and black have lifelink most often, white as a color of healing and protection, and black as a form of vampirism.

Defender

Creatures with defender often have better base stats than a comparable creature without defender, but that comes at a cost - creatures with defender can't attack.  As the name implies, they can only block.  Often, defenders will have other abilities that make the cost of not being able to attack with them one a deckbuilder is willing to pay.  You'll see defenders in all colors, with the most being in the defensive colors, white and blue, and the least in the aggressive colors of black and red.

If it feels like there's a lot going on, there is, especially with the more complicated abilities like trample, deathtouch, and first and double strike.  It's that variety of combat that draws players to the game of Magic, however, as it's a unique puzzle every game of how to best utilize your creatures against your opponent's.

• Player 1 casts a Runeclaw Bear.  Both them and Player 2 decide to do nothing in response to the Runeclaw Bear, and it resolves, coming into play.  The stack is empty again.
• Player 1 casts a Runeclaw Bear.  Player 1 decides to do nothing in response to the Runeclaw Bear, but Player 2 plays a Cancel targeting the Runeclaw Bear.  Both players decide to do nothing in response to the Cancel, and the Cancel resolves.  The Runeclaw Bear is countered and placed in Player 1's graveyard, and Cancel is placed in Player 2's graveyard.  The stack is empty again.
• Player 1 plays an Oakenform targeting a Stampeding Rhino.  Player 1 decides to do nothing in response to the Oakenform, but Player 2 plays a Doom Blade targeting the Stampeding Rhino.  Player 1 plays a Negate targeting the Doom Blade.  Both players decide to do nothing in response to the Negate, and the Negate resolves.  The Doom Blade is countered and is placed in Player 2's graveyard, and Negate is placed in Player 1's graveyard.  Oakenform is still on the stack, and both players decide to do nothing in response to the Oakenform.  Oakenform resolves and comes into place attached to Stampeding Rhino.  The stack is empty again.

There are a couple of concepts that you need to know about how spells and abilities interact with each other on the stack, state-based effects and resolving targeted spells.

State-based Effects

State-based effects are game rules that are checked whenever a player gets an opportunity to do something (called priority).  There are a lot of these effects, but the ones you should remember are:

• If a player has 0 or less life, they lose the game.
• If a player has been instructed to draw a card and can't because there are no cards left in their library, they lose the game.
• If a creature has taken damage equal to or greater than its toughness, that creature is destroyed.
• If a creature has 0 or less toughness, it's put into its owner's graveyard.

State-based effects don't use the stack and can't be responded to.  If a spell or ability is about to reduce you to 0 or less life and you can do something about it, you need to do it in response to the original spell - once it resolves, you lose.

Resolving Targeted Spells and Abilities

Some spells and abilities are targeted.  Most targeted spells and abilities are easy to identify, because they'll have the word target somewhere in the rules text of the card.  A spell or ability can have one target or multiple targets depending on the text of the card.  An example of a targeted spell with one target is Lightning Bolt.  An example of a targeted spell with multiple targets is Agony Warp.

Targets have restrictions.  The card Doom Blade, for example, is restricted to targeting only non-black creatures.  You can only target something that meets all the restrictions on the card.  These restrictions are also checked as the spell or ability resolves.  As the spell or ability resolves, all the targeting restrictions on the card are checked and one of the following things happens:

• All targets are still legal: The spell or ability resolves normally and all the effects on it are done in the order they're written in.
• The spell/ability has one target and it is no longer legal: It is countered. (Longtime Magic players refer to this as the spell 'fizzling'.)
• The spell/ability has multiple targets and all of them are no longer legal: It is countered.
• The spell/ability has multiple targets and some are still legal and some are not: It does as much as it can to the targets that are still legal.  For example, Lunge deals 2 damage to target creature and 2 damage to target player.  If the creature is no longer in play when Lunge resolves, it is not a legal target anymore.  But the player still is, and they take 2 damage.

A couple of very similar examples will show how this works in practice with the last in, first out rule.

• Player 1 controls a Runeclaw Bear.  Player 1 casts Giant Growth targeting Runeclaw Bear.  In response, Player 2 casts Lightning Bolt targeting Runeclaw Bear.  Both players pass and Lightning Bolt resolves, dealing 3 damage to Runeclaw Bear.  State-based effects are checked after Lightning Bolt resolves, and Runeclaw Bear has taken 3 damage vs. its 2 toughness, so it's destroyed.  Both players pass again and Giant Growth no longer has a target, so it's countered.
• Player 1 controls a Runeclaw Bear.  Player 2 casts Lightning Bolt targeting Runeclaw Bear.  In response, Player 1 casts Giant Growth targeting Runeclaw Bear.  Both players pass and Giant Growth resolves, making Runeclaw Bear a 5/5 creature until end of turn.  Both players pass again and Lightning Bolt resolves, leaving Runeclaw Bear a 5/5 with 3 damage dealt to it.

As you can see, even with the same cards, the order things are played in makes a huge difference!  One of the big frustrations for new players is how the stack works and why things work in one direction, but reversing them gives you a different result.

Next, we'll go into detail about combat and talk about some of the common creature abilities that affect combat.

• Beginning Phase - The beginning phase consists of three steps:
  • Untap Step - In the untap step, the player untaps all permanents he or she controls
  • Upkeep Step - In the upkeep step, both players get the opportunity to cast instants and play abilities.  Many cards have abilities that trigger at the beginning of a player's upkeep step, such as Cunning Lethemancer.  Those abilities happen here as well.
  • Draw Step - At the beginning of a player's draw step, that player draws a card.  Then each player gets the opportunity to cast instants and play abilities again.
• Main Phase (Pre-Combat) - During a player's main phase, that player may cast any type of spell as long as nothing else is being cast at that time.  Once a turn, that player may also play a land.  All players get the opportunity to cast instants and play abilities during the main phase as well.
• Combat Phase -
  • Beginning of Combat Step - All players get the opportunity to cast instants and play abilities before attacking creatures are declared.  Once this step has been entered, the player whose turn it is can no longer cast non-instant spells until combat is over.
  • Declare Attackers Step - The player whose turn it is chooses which creatures he would like to have attack, and which players or planeswalkers those creatures will be attacking.  To be able to attack, a creature must have been under that player's control since the beginning of the untap step and must pay the cost for attacking which is tapping the creature.  If a creature is tapped, it can't be tapped again to pay this cost, and thus can't attack.  Once attackers are declared, players get the opportunity to cast instants and play abilities again.
  • Declare Blockers Step - Any player who is being attacked or has a planeswalker that is being attacked may choose to use his creatures to block the oncoming attack.  To block, a creature must be untapped, but blocking does not have the same cost associated with it that attacking does.  Put the blocking creature in front of the attacking creature to make it easy to remember what is blocking what.  More than one creature can block an attacker; if that happens, the attacker gets to choose what order he or she will fight the blockers in.  The defending player may also choose to not block at all.  Once blockers are declared, players get the opportunity to cast instants and play abilities again.
  • Damage Step - Each creature deals damage equal to its power to whatever is in front of it.  If a creature is attacking a player and isn't blocked, that damage is dealt to the player and his or her life total is reduced by the power of the attacking creature.  If a planeswalker is being attacked, remove that much loyalty from the planeswalker.  Except for creatures with certain abilities, if a creature is blocked by another creature, the two will damage each other at the same time.  If a creature takes damage equal to or greater than its toughness, the creature dies.  If there are two of more creatures blocking an attacker, the attacking creature deals at least enough damage to destroy the first blocker (if it can) before moving on to the next.
  • End of Combat - Players get the opportunity to cast instants and play abilities again before returning to the main phase.
• Main Phase (Post-Combat) - This is the same as the pre-combat main phase.  The player whose turn it is can once again cast creatures, artifacts, enchantments, planeswalkers, and sorceries.  If they have not yet played a land this turn, they can play one here.  All players get an opportunity to cast instants and play abilities.
• Ending Phase - There are two parts to the ending phase, the end of turn step and the cleanup step.
  • End of Turn Step - The end of turn step is the last chance players have to cast instants and play abilities in a turn.
  • Cleanup Step - Effects that last until the end of the turn wear off here.  Damage wears off at the same time.  If the player whose turn it is has more than seven cards in his hand, he or she discards down to seven cards.  The turn then passes to the player to their right.

This whole process can be rather intimidating for a new player (the Comprehensive Rules document covers the turn in roughly 10 pages) but thankfully for the new player, most of this can be boiled down to:

• Draw a card.
• Play a land (if you have one).
• Play spells.
• Attack.

Let's take a look at this through a few sample turns with some basic creatures.  You start with the following hand:

On the first turn, the player that goes first does not draw a card, so let's look over the rest of the things you can do on your turn.  You can play a land, so you do, putting a Plains into play.  You are able to make one white mana with that Plains, which is enough to cast Elite Vanguard.  You do this by turning the Plains sideways to indicate that it's been used (tapping it) and put Elite Vanguard from your hand into play.  Elite Vanguard can't attack this turn since he didn't start the turn in play.  Since you can't attack, can't play another land, and can't cast anything else in your hand at the moment, you have nothing more you can do on your turn, so you say you're done, and your opponent goes.  They draw a card, put a Mountain into play, and say they're done.  You don't have to use all of your mana every turn and there is no penalty for not using it.

It's your turn again and you draw another Plains - in a few turns, you'll be able to cast everything in your hand!  You play a second Plains, tap them both to add two white mana to your mana pool, and use that mana to cast Silvercoat Lion.  The Lion can't attack since he just came into play, but your Elite Vanguard can attack.

You declare an attack, using Elite Vanguard to attack your opponent.  You tap Elite Vanguard as the cost for attacking.  Your opponent has no creatures to block with, so we go to damage, where Elite Vanguard deals damage equal to its power to the opponent - two damage in this case.  This damage drops them from 20 to 18 life.  Nine more shots like that and the game is won.  Note that you only get to attack once per turn, so if you have more than one creature that can attack, you can't attack with one creature, see what your opponent does, then attack with another.

You have no more mana to use on your turn, so you are out of things to do and are done for the turn.  Your opponent draws their card, plays another Mountain, and taps both Mountains for two red mana.  He uses that to play Sparkmage Apprentice.  Let's take a moment here to talk about triggered abilities, since Sparkmage Apprentice has one.

Triggered Abilities

Some permanents (and even spells) have effects that happen only at certain times.  Sparkmage Apprentice, for example, has the following effect:

When Sparkmage Apprentice enters the battlefield, it deals 1 damage to target creature or player.

The time the effect happens is before the comma - in this case, when Sparkmage Apprentice enters play after being cast. (The battlefield is the area of play where permanents reside after being cast.) The effect is after the comma.  Sparkmage Apprentice's controller (the person who played her) chooses a target, and Sparkmage Apprentice deals one damage to that target.  The time condition for a triggered ability can be as simple as entering the battlefield, or as complicated as the game would like.

Back to the game, and your opponent uses Sparkmage Apprentice's triggered ability to deal one damage to Elite Vanguard.  Since Elite Vanguard only has one point of toughness, it's destroyed. A creature is destroyed when it has taken damage equal to or greater than its toughness. You put the Elite Vanguard in your graveyard and your opponent passes the turn, since he can't attack with Sparkmage Apprentice.

You untap your two Plains and draw for the turn.  It's Kor Hookmaster, a creature that taps an opponent's creature and keeps it tapped for a turn.  You play your land for the turn, another Plains, and tap all three to play the freshly drawn Hookmaster.  It comes into play and taps your opponent's Sparkmage Apprentice.  Now you attack with Silvercoat Lion, tapping it to pay the cost for attacking.  Your opponent's Sparkmage Apprentice can't block since it's tapped, so he has no choice but to take the two damage and go from 18 to 16.  Things are looking really good for you.  You can't play anything else this turn, so you pass the turn to your opponent.

They untap their Mountains, but not the Sparkmage Apprentice, as the restriction from Kor Hookmaster's triggered ability overrides the usual game rules. If the rules say you can do something, but a card in play says you can't do that thing, the card takes precedence.  Can't always trumps can. They draw a card and play a third Mountain, and then tap all three mountains to play Molten Ravager, a creature with an activated ability.

Activated Abilities

Some permanents have abilities that can be played at any time.  These abilities are called activated abilities because they are activated by paying a cost.  Molten Ravager, for example, has the following ability:

R: Molten Ravager gets +1/+0 until end of turn.

The cost for the ability is to the left of the colon.  In this case, the cost is a single red mana.  The effect is after the colon.  You play activated abilities the same way you would play instants - you say you're playing the ability and then pay the cost, then all players get a chance to respond using a system known as the stack.  We'll cover that in the next article.  Once you pay a red mana, Molten Ravager gets +1/+0 until the end of the turn.  You can play an ability as many times as you'd like, as long as you can pay the cost.

That's certainly changed the game as it's going to be hard to get your attackers through a creature with four toughness like Molten Ravager.  The game continues on from here, but we'll leave it at this point for now and turn our attention to one of the most important concepts in the game, the stack.

• Creature
• Enchantment
• Artifact
• Planeswalker
• Sorcery
• Instant
• Tribal

These cards can be cast on your turn when nothing else is going on, during what is called the main phase. Some card types stay in play once cast, others go to your discard pile (called the graveyard) once they're played.

Creatures

Creatures are the bread and butter of the game of Magic, the troops that you summon into battle at your aid to defeat your opponent. Creatures attack the opponent and his planeswalkers, block incoming attacks, and can have abilities of their own to use outside of combat. Creatures have two key statistics, power and toughness. We'll go through examples of combat later, but know that power is the amount of damage a creature deals in combat, and toughness is the amount of damage a creature can take before dying.  Creatures also have subtypes that can be referenced in gameplay as well.  For example, Veteran Swordsmith gives a bonus to all other creatures with the subtype Soldier that you control.  Picking the right creatures that have positive interactions with one another is a key to deckbuilding.

Enchantments

Enchantments are magical incantations that have a lasting effect on the game. Unlike creatures, enchantments can't attack or block, but can affect creatures by making them stronger, weaker, or giving them abilities they otherwise wouldn't have. Enchantments can also affect rules of the game, allowing you to see more information that you normally would, play spells at other times, draw extra cards, or even protect yourself and your creatures from opposing spells. Telepathy lets you see your opponent's hand whenever you'd like, while Honor of the Pure gives all white creatures you control a power and toughness boost.

Auras

Auras are a subtype of enchantments that affect only a single thing, either a creature, land, artifact, or even player. The first line of text on the card starts with the word Enchant and tells you what type of card the aura can be played on. Once played, it stays on the object it's affecting until the aura or the object is destroyed. Auras can be offensive, like Unholy Strength, giving a creature additional power and toughness, defensive, like Pacifism, which keeps a creature from attacking or blocking, provide additional abilities like Power of Fire which lets you tap the enchanted creature to deal damage to a target, or punitive, like Disruption Aura, which causes the enchanted artifact's controller to pay the artifact's mana cost every turn or lose it.

Artifacts

Artifacts are powerful objects, weaponry and mechanical fighters to aid your cause. Some artifacts are creatures as well, indicated on the type line as having both types, like Stonework Puma. Other artifacts are similar to enchantments, having repeatable effects on the field like Icy Manipulator or a constant effect to one side or the other, like Howling Mine. The unique thing about artifacts is that they are usually cast with any type of mana - there are usually no colored mana requirements to play an artifact, which makes these tools available to all decks.

Equipment

Equipment is a subtype of artifacts representing armor and weaponry that can be passed around between your creatures to increase their stats and confer abilities to them. The effect can be a simple increase of power and toughness like Trusty Machete or grant creatures abilities they wouldn't normally have, like Whispersilk Cloak. They are similar to auras in that they only provide benefits when they're attached to something. Unlike auras, though, equipment does not need to be attached to anything as it comes into play, and the only way an equipment goes away is if it's destroyed. If a creature with equipment attached is destroyed, the equipment is still available to you to attach to another creature by paying its equip cost.

Planeswalkers

Planeswalkers are powerful mages that can be called upon to change the course of a game. Planeswalkers have their own statistic, Loyalty with which you can have them cast powerful spells once per turn. Most planeswalkers, like Jace Beleren, have two small abilities, one which increases loyalty, and one which decreases loyalty - the costs are offset to the left of the ability. All planeswalkers have one large ability which costs a great deal of loyalty which they can't use until their loyalty has increased through use of their smaller abilities. Unlike creatures, they can be attacked directly like a player to drive them away from the battle, and spells that damage players can be sent to damage them. Given enough time and perseverance, a Planeswalker can break the game wide open.

Sorceries

Sorceries are powerful one-time spells that you have at your disposal to enhance your team, destroy opposing creatures, strip cards out of the opponent's hand, and even change the rules of the game. Unlike creatures, lands, enchantments, artifacts, and planeswalkers, sorceries go to the graveyard once played instead of into play. Sorceries are representative of the slow, powerful spells your chosen color or colors have that their disposal. Note that slow is not necessarily translated into high cost, but effects the game would like to keep from happening anytime, primarily land destruction and discard spells. Examples of sorceries include Rampant Growth, Mind Rot, and Planar Cleansing.

Instants

Instants are one-time effect spells, like sorceries. When you play an instant, you perform all the actions on the card and then put it in your graveyard. Instants can be played at just about any time, in reaction to spells played by yourself or your opponent, on the opponent's turn, and other times when you cannot normally play spells. Because of their flexibility, they tend to have slightly weaker effects than sorcery cousins at the same cost. Make no mistake, though, a player who knows when and how to use his or her instant spells is very formidable indeed. Some examples of instants include Lightning Bolt, Safe Passage, and Essence Scatter.

Tribal

Tribal is a minor card type that does not exist on its own. It exists with other card types to give creature types to spells that could not normally have them. Featured heavily in sets where creature type is a focus, you won't see any of these in the current set.

You'll also see the term "permanent" on some cards, like Disperse. A permanent is any card that stays on the battlefield after being cast; land, creature, artifact, enchantment or planeswalker. In addition, some cards have more than one type, such as Ancient Den and Platinum Angel and have the benefits and drawbacks of each.

Next we'll look at the basic rules of the game and a couple sample turns.

Colors

Magic cards come in five colors. Each color has its own strengths and weaknesses and its own themes throughout:

• White is the color of knights and angels, soldiers and organized armies. White mana is drawn from the vast Plains of the worlds and is represented by a shining sun symbol. White magic tends to be used for healing its caster and its armies, increasing the combat abilities of its entire army, and in moments of desperation (or it all being part of your plan), it calls down the might of the heavens to create Catastrophes. Its strengths are a good mix of early offense with later defense, its ability to punish opposing creatures that dare attack it, and its ability to reset the game by destroying all creatures on all sides of the battlefield. It is weakest when a creature doesn't need to attack to disrupt its gameplan.
• Blue is the color of artifice and illusion, knowledge and cunning. Defended by sea birds, merfolk, mages, drakes, sphinxes and elementals of the air and sea, blue mages would rather avoid combat altogether. Blue mana comes from the Islands of the worlds and is represented by a waterdrop symbol. Blue magic is used to deflect and deter enemies, sapping opposing forces of their power and keeping them from fighting altogether. Blue also has the power to Negate and Cancel opposing spells before they can be completed and even persuade enemy creatures to join your forces. Its strengths are its ability to counter opposing spells, draw a much greater nubmer of spells than the opposition, and its interaction with the various artifacts of Magic. Once something reaches the battlefield, however, it can be difficult for blue to deal with it.
• Black is the color of darkness, deceit, and greed, making pacts with demons, foul spirits, and vampires. Black mana is drawn from the Swamps of the worlds and is represented by a skull symbol. Black mana is used to spread death and decay to opposing creatures, plaguing and poisoning their lands, and stripping away access to their thoughts and spells. Its strengths are its ability to destroy at pinpoint opposing creatures and lands, the ability to force opponents to lose cards in hand, and weaken creatures globally. Those deals with the dark can come back to bite you, as black spells often cannot destroy black creatures, and black's most powerful creatures often exact a toll on the caster other than mana. In addition, black is powerless to stop opposing artifacts and enchantments once they hit play.
• Red is the color of fire, chaos, and anarchy. Amidst the dragons and giants, red mages control the whims of lizardmen, goblins, and nomadic tribes as best they can, sparking fire and lightning from the sky to damage their opponent's creatures and their opponents themselves. Red mana is drawn from the Mountains of the worlds and is represented by a fireball symbol. Red magic burns away opposing forces, scorches the opposition itself, and tears the land and its artifacts asunder in moments of raw rage. Its strengths are its ability to deal damage directly to creatures and players, the tools to destroy opposing artifacts in great quantity, and the rage and speed its creatures attack with. Red's weaknesses are its inability to deal with opposing enchantments and the chaos that many of its spells require to be most effect, destroying things at random, forcing you to give up a spell at random, or tossing the known aside for the unknown.
• Green is the color of nature, life, and elemental strength. Creatures big and small, from snakes and insects to mighty beasts, elementals, and wurms walk nature's path. Green mana is drawn from the Forests of the worlds and is represented by a tree symbol. Green magic allows its wielder to draw more energy from the land, quickly discover more terrain to draw from, and strengthen its creatures individually with the power teeming from the world. With that extra energy, the green mage can bring forth the largest creatures in the game or call forth a massive army with frightening speed. Its strengths are its ability to accelerate into bigger creatures and spells than the other colors, destroy opposing artifacts and enchantments with ease, and using nature's force to push its creatures over opposing ones. Its weakness is its inability to deal with opposing creatures outside of combat. If the enemy doesn't want to fight directly with the green mage, there's not a lot he or she can do about it.

Lands

Lands are the base resources used in the game. Lands produce mana which is used to summon creatures and cast spells. Each of the five colors has a basic land type with which to draw from - Plains for white, Island for blue, Swamp for black, Mountain for red and Forest for green. These land types have special rules associated with them - if a card has one of these five types, it can be tapped to produce one mana of the appropriate color. You will see lands other than these five as well, and some of them have one or more of these land types. This implied ability associated with the land type extends to those cards as well.

As the basic resource of the game, lands have special rules as opposed to other cards. While you can cast as many spells as you like in a turn (as long as you can pay their costs), you are limited to playing one land per turn, and only on your turn. This rule helps keep the development of the game even between players, as long as they draw land cards. If you don't have a land card in your hand on your turn, you simply don't get to play one that turn - there is no additional penalty.

Costs

The other cards in the game cost mana to play. This cost is represented by the symbols in the upper right corner of the card. You can see those symbols in the costs of the following cards:

• Elite Vanguard
• Unsummon
• Deathmark
• Raging Goblin
• Llanowar Elves

Each of these cards costs one mana of the appropriate color to cast. You tap a Plains to add a white mana to cast Elite Vanguard. Let's take a look at some other costs.

• White Knight - This card costs two white mana to cast. You need to tap two Plains to pay for this spell. You'll note that the colored mana symbols do not stack on each other - each one represents exactly one mana of that color.
• Runeclaw Bear - This card costs one green mana and one generic mana (represented by the 1 in they grey symbol) to cast. You need to tap one Forest and one land of any type (including another Forest) to pay for this spell.
• Divination - This card costs one blue mana and two generic mana to cast. You'll note that the generic mana symbols do stack - there is only one generic mana symbol in the cost of any spell, and that symbol tells you how much generic mana the spell costs in addition to the colored mana. You need to tap one Island and two other lands of any type to pay for this spell.
• Shatterskull Giant - This card costs two red mana and two generic mana to cast. You can see the mix here between multiple colored mana symbols and the single generic mana symbol. You need to tap two Mountains and two lands of any type to pay for this spell.
• Underworld Dreams - This card costs three black mana to cast. There is no limit to the number of colored mana symbols in the cost of a spell (other than formatting to fit on the card). You need to tap three Swamps to pay for this spell.

You are not limited to playing just one color of mana and cards in your deck. but with playing only one land a turn, spells like White Knight and Underworld Dreams are much harder to cast in a deck with multiple colors. This is at the heart of the core tension that makes Magic so interesting - you get rewarded with better spells at the cost by sticking to one color, but in turn you are then limited by that color's inherent weaknesses.

Up next, I'll go over the seven other card types that make up the game of Magic.

The Game

Magic: the Gathering is a strategy collectible card game. Most commonly played between two individuals or two teams of two (Two-Headed Giant), a game can involve any number of people at once. Magic combines the strategic intrigue of chess with the hidden information and social strategy of poker along with the skills to shift strategies to match earlier plays, much like bridge (Thanks, Zaiem!). Magic differs from all of these games in that the elements of the game (the pieces in chess, the cards in poker and bridge) are not static - no two matches of Magic will ever look the same because of deck customization. Of the thousands of cards printed, a deck will usually be sixty cards. The possibilities are legitimately endless, and it's this wealth of possibilities that attracts strategy game players and can overwhelm new players as they pick up the game. Don't worry about the strategies of deck building just yet - we'll get to that later.

The Cards

As I mentioned, Magic is played with cards, and a lot of information is contained on those cards. Let's take a look at one now:

Most cards will look like this, although some cards will look different depending on what set they're from.  Let's go over the information on the card.

• Top Line (Name, (Mana Cost)) - The top line of the card contains two very important pieces of information - the card's name and mana cost.  This card's name is Runeclaw Bear, one of the common denizens of the forests of the game's universes. Its mana cost is in the upper right hand corner. The tree symbol is the symbol for green mana and the one symbol stands for one generic mana. To play it, you need two mana, one green mana and one mana of any type. We'll cover each of the different types of mana later.
• Art Box - The art box contains the art for the card. Here we see a particularly angry bear, one that looks like it's been infused with some magical power, standing over a kill. Kinda gruesome. Art itself doesn't serve a purpose in the game world, but the art of Magic: the Gathering draws a large group of people in to collecting the game. In addition, any given set is printed in several different languages, so you might not recognize the card from the text, but the art doesn't change (for the most part).
• Type Line (Card Type(s), Expansion Symbol) - The type line gives specific information about what kind of card this is and what set it has come from. The left side of the line is the type of card. Cards come in one (or more) of eight types:
  • Creature
  • Enchantment
  • Artifact
  • Land
  • Planeswalker
  • Instant
  • Sorcery
  • Tribal

  Each card type has its own rules associated with them. Runeclaw Bear is a Creature, the basic unit of combat in the Magic world. Creatures attack and defend as part of the goal of winning the game. Some card types also have subtypes, the information after the dash. This Creature is also a Bear. If you have a card that affects Bears, this card would be affected by it. On the right hand side of the type line, you have the expansion symbol. This tells you at a glance what set the card is from, and on newer sets, the rarity of the card. Runeclaw Bears are from the Magic 2010 Core Set, represented by the M10 expansion symbol. Its symbol is black, the color for common. Each pack comes with a certain number of commons, a certain number of uncommons, and either a rare or mythic rare.

• Text Box (Rules Text, Flavor Text) - The text box contains the meaty information about the card that can't be communicated by the structure of the card itself. If a card does something other than what the rules say a card of its type normally does, that information appears in the text box in normal font. Below that, in italics, you can often fin flavor text, text that doesn't affect gameplay, but helps tie the card into the setting of the game. Runeclaw Bear has no rules text - he has no special function other than being a creature.
• Bottom Line (Artist Credit, Copyright, Collector's Number, (Power/Toughness), (Loyalty)) - The bottom line contains collection information on all cards. You can see who drew the art on the card (and a lot of Magic artists have sites where you can see more of their work and order prints of pieces you especially like). Runeclaw Bear was drawn by Jesper Ejsing. This also gives copyright information on the card - if it doesn't have that information, it's either a much older card or a fake. There is also a collector's number for players and collectors to organize by. Runeclaw Bear is #203 in the M10 set. In the bottom right hand corner, if the card is a Creature, you'll see its Power and Toughness stats here in their own box. These numbers are used to determine the outcome of combat between creatures. Runeclaw Bear has 2 power - it deals 2 damage in combat. It also has 2 toughness - it dies when it takes 2 damage. Another card type, Planeswalkers, have a single number in the bottom right, their starting Loyalty. I'll explain Loyalty when we discuss Planeswalkers in detail.

That's a lot of information contained on one card, but the beauty of the design of Magic is that all the important information is readily accessible on the card. Once you learn the two fundamental concepts of Magic, card types and card costs, you can grab all the information you need about a card at a glance.

Up next, we'll cover card costs in detail and talk about the Land card type, as the two are very closely related. After that, we'll talk about the other seven card types, and then look at the rules of the game and go over a sample game. Please let me know what you think in the comments section or send me an email!